There is great potential for increasing a user's productivity and comfort level by creating a more personalized computing experience. Currently, most users change few or none of the default operating system settings. Users stick with the default settings each time a new system is used because of the inconvenience of configuring a computing environment. A physical disability preventing a user from changing the settings or a lack of knowledge on how to do this are among the other reasons why a user may remain with the default settings.
The current computer desktop environment stores one profile of settings for each account on the system. If a user of one computer wants his or her custom settings on another computer, there are currently two options. The user can create an account on the other computer and then customize the settings of the new account or the user can use an existing account on the other computer and manually change the settings as desired. The first option requires a user with the proper access to create an account. The user must then customize the environment. If this computer is located in a public setting, it may not be practical to create an account for so many one-time users. The problem with the second option is that once the settings are changed, each subsequent user is forced to conform to these settings or change them again. Either scenario discourages users from customizing their computing environment.